TEN YEARS AFTER

WHEN, IN 1966, legendary guitarist Albert Lee and bass player Leo Lyons joined a British blues band, variously named the Jaybirds, Blues Trip and Blues Yard, they changed the group’s name to Ten Years After. Some say the name was inspired by the passing of ten years since Elvis Presley’s most successful year, others that Leo saw the name in the Radio Times, ten years after the crisis of 1956 when Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal. In 2021, Tom Lenthall’s Ten Years After moment marked the time he found a 3.8-litre Mk 2 saloon in a garage, desperate for resuscitation.

Would Tom have given a second thought to the lyrics of Losing the Dogs by Ten Years After, which opens with, ‘Well you work the day sweatin’ while you’re tryin’ to earn your bread’? Almost certainly not, but that is exactly what he was doing back in 2011, when, just four years after starting